Adventures with lightweight and minimalist software for Linux

meterec: A halfhearted endorsement

Next up is meterec, which brands itself as a multitrack audio recorder based on the JACK sound structure.

I must also hold out a rather weak thumbs-up for this one, mostly because I had serious difficulty getting this to work against JACK in both Debian and Arch, but also because audio recording at this level is far beyond my skill set.

I have a very basic understanding of the needs and use of recording enthusiasts, but aside from pressing “play” on a CD player, I don’t have much musical ability.

Which means that the world of audio recording is mostly foreign. I have a stronger understanding of playback (I was once a rabid audiophile) but nothing to clue me in on how to use meterec.

In fact, what you see in the image there is just the Debian version running its interface demo, and I don’t think anything was actually accomplished there. The Arch version was likewise puzzling to me, and again I have bumped up against my time limit for exploring software intricacies.

I like that there is an interface, and from what I can tell by pressing random buttons, it seems well behaved. There are mute, pass-through and looping features all listed in the --help summary, so you shouldn’t need too much prodding if you know what you’re doing with a multitrack session recorder.

I, on the other hand, am just a babe in the woods when it comes to this type of software. And add to that my unfamiliarity with JACK, and my lack of any real musical talent, means it may be a very long time before the intricacies of meterec are clear to me.